Reagan grace vs. Clinton revenge

The news is filled stories on the vindictive nature of Bill And Hillary Clinton. The Daily Mail reported:

A new book alleges that former President Bill Clinton and wife Hillary have compiled a so-called “enemies list” of fellow Democrats who didn’t endorse Hillary in the 2008 presidential primary, but instead backed her main rival, then-Senator Barack Obama.

According to the book, titled HRC — the initials of Hillary Rodham Clinton — she and her husband created “a special circle of Clinton hell…for people who had endorsed [President] Obama.”

The book claims that after the 2008 primary, the Clintons had an aide compile a list of everyone they felt betrayed the former first lady.

“She and Bill would have at their fingertips all the information needed to make a quick decision,’ the authors reported. ‘So that friends could be rewarded and enemies punished.”

And that’s how the Clintons treat their fellow Democrats!

Contrast that with the record of Ronald Reagan, the late president and governor of California. This is from reporter Patrick McGuigan:

I wrote a book in the late 1980s about the failed attempt to confirm Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. I made pointed criticisms of my favorite modern American politician — Reagan — concluding he had fumbled the ball by not advocating more aggressively for his nominee. I even criticized [Attorney General Edwin] Meese, the best friend I had in a high-ranking post in the Reagan administration.

When I left Washington, D.C., in 1990, none of the criticisms mattered to Reagan, who had left the year before. He wrote a letter encouraging fellow conservatives to study my book and the lessons I drew on how the next such nominee could fare better in the rough-and-tumble U.S. Senate confirmation.

That was classic Reagan. He never held a grudge. It served him well in a profession where grudge-holding has defined too many.